Violence in the creative writing component of GCSE students’ coursework has fuelled concerns about the cultural influences on teenagers.

In some cases, examiners said, students produced thinly plotted but extremely disturbing content. Their report on GCSE English shows that the title The Assassin was frequently chosen by pupils in the “personal and imaginative writing” section.

Teaching associations expressed unease about the trend, particularly in light of the spate of murders and knife attacks involving young people.

Ian McNeilly, of the National Association for the Teaching of English, said that teachers should be concerned when they encountered extremely violent writing. “Any teacher presented with a script that manages, in the examiners’ words, to maintain a ‘sickening’ level of violence should be concerned,” Mr McNeilly said.

“Personally, I would give students the opportunity to write about something else. We have got enough assassins walking the streets, unfortunately, without giving them time in the classroom.”

Examiners also said that plagiarism remained a “pervasive issue”. In attempts to eradicate cheating, GCSE coursework is being cut back and in many subjects pupils will not be allowed to complete projects at home.

The report also expressed concerns at teachers giving “incomprehensibly high marks” for poor work in which students struggled with basics such as spelling, grammar and sentence structure.

Amid alarm over the number of youths caught up in violent gang culture, examiners said that the title The Assassin featured frequently in the imaginative section of coursework, worth 10 per cent of the final English mark. “This facilitated candidates to write in their own voice but within a very limiting framework, which allowed them to create and maintain a (sometimes sickeningly violent) atmosphere but provided few opportunities for character or plot development,” the Edexcel board report said. “Occasionally, there was a sense that units were awarded marks on the basis of quantity rather than quality. Some work, which was riddled with spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes, was awarded incomprehensibly high marks.”

Examiners were right to raise the issue of violence, Mr McNeilly said. “Look at some of the cultural influences, especially regarding music, that young people are exposed to - much of it espouses violence.” Staff might vary tasks set for pupils so that titles such as The Assassin were not overused.

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